Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 197 
acre; but in the first place you want to take the different condi¬ 
tions between England and Wisconsin. 
Every particle of organic matter, except the grain raised upon 
the soil, is put back again. There is no straw or hay sold from the 
farm scarcely, and the grain that is sold, is sold mostly in the form 
of beef, and if it is sold as grain, a large proportion of the money 
which is obtained from the sale of that grain is used in the manu¬ 
facture of manure and returning it to the soil again. 
Now if farming is done in this way—if there are large quanti¬ 
ties of organic matter placed back upon the soil each year, you can 
continue to use large quantities of lime. But, even in England, 
the large quantities of lime that were used forty years ago, are not 
used now. They have learned the fact that they can only use lime 
when they have very large quantities of organic matter in the soil. 
There are some localities where the soil scarcely contains any lime 
—where the rocks from which the soil is formed are granitic rocks. 
Where the water is soft there is not sufficient lime in the soil for 
plants, but the amount of lime that plants require is exceedingly 
small. The ash of plants is scarcely ever over three per cent. 
In all our soils in the West there is no deficiency of lime for the 
use of plants. Lime is an indirect manure, and is not used directly 
by plants, and that is true of other manures as Tve attempted to 
prove to you yesterday. . 
President Bascom. I didn’t hear the professor’s paper, but if I 
understood him, he says, u lime is chiefly beneficial because it is to 
act on the organic matter in the soil, and put it in a favorable con¬ 
dition for the plants. 1 ’ I would like to have him reconcile his sec¬ 
ond position when he says at another time, that “ the organic mat¬ 
ter is to put the mineral matter in proper condition.’’ 
Professor Daniells. Nearly all the nourishment which plants 
take up from the soil is inorganic matter, almost absolutely all of it. 
This is contradicted by men who say they have been raising plants 
all their lives, but 1 never investigated it, but simply have the fact 
that for more than one hundred years there have been men who 
have made this their life study, and they have found this to be true 
by actual experiment. 
Organic matter through the soil is not necessary to the growth of 
plants, as I told you yesterday, if it were, you could not grow plants 
in coal-ashes and powdered brick-dust, which you can do. In de- 
